POLAND A HISTORY

“When Adam Zamoyski’s bestselling first history of Poland, The Polish Way , was published in 1987, the country was in a state of subjugation, with most of its living culture surviving only underground or in the exile. Though the election of Pope John Paul II in 1978 and the dramatic rise of the Solidarity movement in the early 1980s brought Poland to the world’s attention, it was only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 that Poland was rejuvenated as a political entity.
As Zamoyski set out to update The Polish Way, he realized the task required not so much re-writing as re-thinking the known facts as the assumptions of the past. The events of the last twenty years and the growth of the independent Polish state allowed him to look at Poland’s past with a fresh eye. Tracing Poland’s complex development from the Middle Ages to present day, Zamoyski examines the country’s political, economic, and military struggles, as well as its culture, art, and richly varied society through the ages, bringing the major events and characters in Poland’s history to life.”